Fieldnotes: Blogging on UNICEF's child survival work in the field

	© U.S. Fund for UNICEF/2007/David McKenzie

Arrived in Kigali, Rwanda late last night. Had a short amount of time in Kigali before we crossed the border to Goma, DR Congo and spent it at the Kigali Memorial Center.

The center was established as a reminder to Rwanda and the world of the horrors of genocide in an attempt to stop history from repeating itself. The first floor retraces the history of Rwanda and the events leading up to the genocide, and details the heinous event itself.

The second floor touched me deeply as there is an area devoted to children who were killed in the genocide. As a living tribute to the hundreds of thousands of children who were murdered in a ninety day period, it was especially moving to read about the individual lives of some of these children.

They lead normal lives like any other children but were senselessly cut short. Some were hacked to death by machetes, others were bludgeoned by clubs. Particularly chilling was the story of a young boy who came across another child whose legs had been hacked off. The boy tried to carry his wounded friend but was forced to leave him behind when they came under assault again. The boy cries all day at the memory of this and the subsequent murder of the boy he tried to save.

Following the nightmare of the genocide in Rwanda, the people of the DR Congo across the border have also bourne the consequences. Since 1998, conflict in the DR Congo has contributed to the deaths of an estimated 4 million people, half of them children. This makes DR Congo the deadliest conflict on earth since World War II.

We’re now driving to the DR Congo border to spend a week investigating the impact of the conflict on children.

© U.S. Fund for UNICEF/2007/Lisa Szarkowski

Lucy Liu and Luciano Calestini, UNICEF emergency specialist, at the Rwanda Genocide Memorial

For more information visit: unicefusa.org/drc
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